350:391 Issues and Problems in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture

During the latter half of the eighteenth century, writers, poets, and philosophers were rethinking the relationship between the external world and the internal self. How does the world construct our minds? How do our imaginations, in turn, reconstruct the world? Also, what is the relationship between the literary work and the outside world—or between the author and her creation? This course will examine how narrative, poetry, and criticism during this period explores the dynamics of “inside-out” and “outside-in”. Readings will include works by Sterne, Radcliffe, Wordsworth, Austen, and Blake.